Not content with turning Doctor Who into a modern woke fest they have now
fecked up Rebus.
The heralded "prequel" seems to take place in modern times, his assistant
Siobhan is now, what a surprise, an Asian, plus the obligatory effing and
jeffing and sex.
I'm surprised Ian Ranking gave his name to this abomination.
Not long re-watched the John Hannah, Ken Stott episodes which were
brilliant, lost interest after 10 minutes of the new series.
TV has not treated Rebus kindly. The original episodes were fairly faithful
to the books but used the most mis-cast actor in history. John Hannah is a
good actor but he was too young, too cultured and not world-weary and
grizzled enough to come anywhere close to the novels. Even he has admitted
that he was probably mis-cast!
When I read the novels, before seeing either of the original portrayals, I
immediately thought of Ken Stott, having seen him in a one-off play about
the Sally Army with Kevin Whately and Lesley Manville. And lo and behold the
later stories used him. He was *exactly* as I had envisioned Rebus. And the
actress who played Siobhan was gorgeous... Sadly they mucked around with the
stories. Can't win :-(
Can't comment on the latest Rebus, but Asian Siobhan is an interesting
variation. Was Siobhan ever described in the novels in a way that would
preclude her being non-white? Maybe it's like the Harry Potter films where
everyone assumes that the main characters were white, both from reading the
books and from later seeing the films, but a stage play has Hermione played
by a black actress. Interesting development - could work well.
Same as with the Inspector Banks (Peter Robinson) dramatisation. Stephen
Tompkinson really wasn't right for the part - too abrasive and not given
enough character attributes which made you care about him, in a way that
book-Banks was. I went to see a couple of talks by Peter Robinson and "do
you think Stephen Tompkinson matches your version of Banks" was a common
question, and he bent over so far backwards to be diplomatic and fair that
his true beliefs were obvious on the grounds of "the man doth protest too
much". ;-)
The one case where TV has improved on novels is the later Martin Shaw
portrayals of Adam Dalgliesh in P D James's novels. P D James writes him as
the most supercilious, patronising, emotionless man ever to walk this earth,
which is odd when he was supposed to be a celebrated poet in his spare
time - I bet his poetry was truly *dire*. Roy Marsden portrayed this
faithfully, with added snideness. Hated that portrayal (and the novels) with
a vengeance. The last two stories were dramatised much later, by BBC rather
than by Anglia (ITV), with Martin Shaw. And Martin Shaw made him a likeable
human being - what a breath of fresh air. For the first time I could see
what his girlfriend Emma Lavenham would actually have found attractive in
him. Book-Dalgliesh and Marsden-Dalgliesh really fail the "pint in a pub"
test - of the various TV detectives, could I imagine spending half an hour
with them over a pint in a pub. I fear that time would pass very slowly with
Roy Marsden's Dalgliesh because he and I would have no common ground to talk
about. Morse was erudite but he had a sense of humour and, at least in the
books, he had a fondness for soft porn, giving him a human failing. Frost
would be a laugh a minute because he is so direct and so scathing about
senior management. Wexford would be benevolent, as long as he hadn't been
made an old-fashioned un-PC fuddy-duddy as Ruth Rendell did in her later
books which she described as "the political Wexfords" - pronounced
poh-litical when I heard RR speak. She rather hammered home her bias in her
late books, sadly. "Juliet Bravo" (two incarnations), Maggie Forbes (Gentle
Touch) and various other TV detectives would be fine. But a pint with
Marsden-Dalgliesh - heavens, no. Just no!
Interestingly, I could see a lot of mannerisms of Marsden-Dalgliesh that
were like my grandpa, who was a primary school headmaster. But I knew what
his pupils didn't, that his stern-ness was a put-on job and that underneath
that, in grandpa-mode, he had a wicked sense of humour. it would have been
nice to see Marsden-Dalgliesh occasionally shed his aloof work persona.